HD failure ??

Hello everyone im in need of some serious help on my computer these days. Couple weeks ago, windows starts freezing up when i rebooted my computer. It gets to the point where it logs on to windows after a long period of time, i click to minimize my asus ai booster and it freezes. Sometimes it doesnt freeze if i leave that alone, but if i click on my computer to look at my HDs, it will just stop responding requiring a hard boot. So then, i try installing windows onto another partition. Windows installs fine, start installing drivers, but when i restart it runs a chkdsk and says there is corrupted segments or something, it tries to long into windows and after a rediculous amount of time, desktop comes up but no icons and its not responding.

I try this with all three hard drives on several different partitions, all with the same mess. So i figure the hard drives are messing up, so i order a new external hard drive. The first one i get is in a messed up box, i try to install a fresh copy onto that but before it can complete the install, i get a blue screen of death, which says a problem has been detected.. check for viruses on your computer, remove any new hard drives or newly installed hard drive controllers. run chkdsk for hard drive corruption. And here is the error msg:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78O663C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

So i figure this is just because the HD is damaged because of the damaged package, i get an rma from newegg, just got the new on and retry. SAME THING !! So it cant be the hard drive right, just what the hell is going on ? I cant log into any version of windows on my 3 hard drives. Please help

I'm in a similar situation right now and havn't had time to resolve it yet, but I'll fill you in on my steps so far:

I wasn't able to reinstall windows either (different errors, but same steps) I'm going to try using MINIPE to boot to my system, that will let me know if it's a problem with how my system is handling the hard drives, or whether some other component is keeping me from booting.

Pull out all non-vital hardware and retry the installation with the bare essentials: Hard drive, optical, cpu, video, one stick of ram. It could be a problem with one of your peripherals.

Try booting from MiniPE, BartPE, live cd linux distro, or any other cd bootable OS. This will help you trouble shoot if it's a problem with your core system (mobo/ram/cpu/gpu) or if something is interfering with proper use of the hard drives. At the very least, if you can boot from cd, you can transfer your vital files to your new external drive.

Sometimes windows doesn't like installing to USB drives, Try replacing the cable to your hard drive (they go out as often as the drives themselves, especially if you change your configuration a lot) and installing the OS.

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78O663C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
the above stop error is also many computers problem. this happens when the OS is not Geniun, as an adivice you try to find the original OS and upgrade it before you change you HD. for inistance, if you use WIn 2006 which the version of SP2, faced with this problem...

Checked the temps in bios, the CPU was 45 C and the MB was like 38 C i think. Thats acceptable right ? little warm.. I have a cooler master case with 4 120mm fans in the side and 1 in the front and the back. As far as i know all the fans are still working, but i will double check.

And for the original version, it is an original disk. I actually have two, and i've tried both. One is an old SP1, the other is an upgrade for SP2. I used the very same disk to install on the damaged HD just before I got the new HD. Used the same disk on the brand new HD, got that error, sent that one back for another brand new one two weeks later, and the exact same problem. very annoying, i want my computer back !! thanks everyone for help though.

I will say that it is completely possible. I can only guess that some manufacturers do not properly pack hard-drives for shipments and they get damaged from truck to truck. It happened to me with some maxtor HD's about a year ago....I went through three of them before I simply switched to seagate with no troubles at all.....good luck on your issue, it sounds like the guys above are headed in the right direction with you!

damn. ok well thx everyone for input, im going to return the HD and order another one from a different manufacturer and see if that works. but can anyone tell me if it sounds like my HDs did in fact fail ? And if so, is there any way to recover the data from them ??

if you can load windows at all (even if it freezes up) you can access the data by connecting the drive to another system, some files may be corrupted if the issues are from a drive failure, but most (if not all) should be recoverable

to add to Oly's post, if you are unable to use another PC for this, take your drives to your local computer store, or something like a Best Buy. As long as the drives not corrupted, they will extract the files for you (A small fee of about $50-$75 USD will apply). So I just wanted to add this idea as an option. Good luck to you!

I'm in a similar situation right now and havn't had time to resolve it yet, but I'll fill you in on my steps so far:

I wasn't able to reinstall windows either (different errors, but same steps) I'm going to try using MINIPE to boot to my system, that will let me know if it's a problem with how my system is handling the hard drives, or whether some other component is keeping me from booting.

Pull out all non-vital hardware and retry the installation with the bare essentials: Hard drive, optical, cpu, video, one stick of ram. It could be a problem with one of your peripherals.

Try booting from MiniPE, BartPE, live cd linux distro, or any other cd bootable OS. This will help you trouble shoot if it's a problem with your core system (mobo/ram/cpu/gpu) or if something is interfering with proper use of the hard drives. At the very least, if you can boot from cd, you can transfer your vital files to your new external drive.

Sometimes windows doesn't like installing to USB drives, Try replacing the cable to your hard drive (they go out as often as the drives themselves, especially if you change your configuration a lot) and installing the OS.

Let me know how it goes and I'll update if I think of anything else.

damn oly i didnt even see this post, somehow. I will try these steps before i do anything. Thanks a lot for the help, i should be able to figure out what the problem is by doing this. Hell it may even be the cables, i didnt even realize they go out that quickly, bc i have changed my configuration a few times in the past few months. thx again oly and will see if this works !

Have you tryed to use a hard drive checker like HD tune this will tell you the S.M.A.R.T. state and will do a serfice scann to search for badblocks you can download DH tune form here http://www.hdtune.com/

If you cant boot the computer to run this then you can try ubd4win found here http://www.ubcd4win.com/
this will make a live win xp boot disk and hd tune is one of the tools in it.

thanks pitbull, i actually tried oly's advice and just tried putting new sata cables on, and ill be damned it worked like a charm. but, my 500GB is no doubt damaged. so i will try and run that program. thanks everyone for the help, i appreciate it.